Sunday, 16 June 2013

Not to be out done by my wife I thought I'd get in on this re-growing veg from the root lark, only I've done cabbages.

If you read my wife's blog you'll know she's quite adept at re-growing celery from the root, you can read about it here - re-growing-celery (opens in new window) but it would seem that cabbages can also be re-grown in the same way, you probably already know this ?

Here's our first attempt -

It's taken about a month to get to this stage.

Not bad really, and it gives you what is effectively a second crop of leaves, the cabbage in the picture above is a spring green type, but it does work with other varieties, and it's easy to do.

Once you're finished with your cabbage just put the stalk in a little pot with a bit of water for a week or so.

As long as your cabbage has the stalk intact it should work -

If you have this bit your in business.

Leave the cabbage in the water on a warm window sill, and change the water now and then, you don't have to do much, in a week or two you should start to see little buds appearing (if you look at the stalk you may already see some) once the buds start to show you may also notice that the stalk has small bumps on the bottom, these are the start of the plants new roots.

These are the little buds I mentioned -

This should work for any type of cabbage.

Once you have buds showing, and the start of what will be roots stick the stalk in some compost, you don't need to push it in, just rest it on the top of the compost, and give it a good watering, and again leave it in a warm spot, a greenhouse will do just as well as a window sill.

Here's our second one being started off -

If you look closely there's a bud or two already.

Then with a bit of luck in a week or two you'll have something that looks like a plant, rather than a stalk wedged in a pot.

Like this -

It's working.

Here's the roots, not many yet, but quite healthy -

There be roots.

And that's it basically, just treat it like any other plant, give it water and a bit of sun and it'll turn into something you can use, the leaves won't get very big, but they are very tasty, great for slicing and putting in stir fries or just eaten as they are, and if you don't want to eat them you can feed them to your chickens if you have any, or any other pets, like rabbits and guinea pigs, if nothing else it'll save a few pence here and there, the stalks are good in stews by the way, same goes for broccoli stalks.

Here's a picture of the roots on our first one -

Loads of roots.

I plan on trying this with various other plants, to see what happens, I doubt it'll work with everything, but it costs nothing to try, and might just save a pound here or there, as an example you don't need seed spuds to grow new plants, you can grow new plants from the peelings.